I am curious about e-scooters but have never ridden one. They have a lower centre of mass which, in theory, would offer some advantage over bicycles in terms of the severity of collisions.
Otoh would you not tend to have more control issues over uneven terrain? I think about my inline skates from the 90s. The streets suck here, and I had one too many an instance of a pothole or a bump sending me flying to keep that up.
Scooters have bigger wheels than skates, of course, but much smaller than bikes and they seem to have very low ground clearance. This makes me a little edgy.
My coworker who switched to one after riding an e-bike to work said the brakes were weaker with the e-scooter. That could just be a workmanship issue. I’d have to think about whether physics would play a role there?
How is the center of mass is lower on a scooter? It is the same or higher. The head is the heaviest part / cm³ of the body and on a e-scooter you’re standing up, on a bike you’re sitting, bringing the head a bit lower. The tiny scooter wheels will react enormously to tiny disadvantages in the road surface and the consequences of it. Hitting an tiny rock on the asfalt with a e-scooter will result in way nastier accidents than hitting a similar rock on the asfalt with a bicycle.
Same with sudden breaking: imagine the situation where you suddenly have to break and the rear break fails (on both bike and scooter) so only the front break works. The forces required in that situation to get you “flying” head first towards objects with a e-scooter are much much lower than with a e-bike (wich is heaver and more distributed over a larger surface). The chance of being sent “flying” is simply way way lower on a bicyle vs scooter in many situations, making bicycle typically much safer than e-scooter.
I’m never in my life riding e-scooters again, after having read a few articles with interviews from doctors in hospitals about how people look when they come in after accidents with scooters. And most of those were accidents with no other parties involved, just someone on a scooter hitting a tiny pothole, rock, sidewalk thingy etc.
@freebee @tunetardis regarding centre of mass - the bike, itself, is heavier than the scooter too. And “sit-up-and-beg” positioned shopper-style town bikes move your mass even further back - little chance of catapulting forward on one of those. The centre of mass is *far* lower on a bike.
I ride a scooter on a regular basis. With regards to terrain: I can do uneven terrain pretty well. The only time I’ve run into trouble is when my wheel got caught on a train track once, but that was easily avoidable. 100% I can assure you they are easier to manage than skates.
As for the brakes, they can definitely kind of suck. My scooter only has brakes on the front wheel, which makes riding in the rain diffcult, but I’ve learned to do slower braking which prevents my back wheel from fish-tailing.
I also ride a bike sometimes but I’m not very good at it, so I can’t compare.
Rentals.
Here’s my hot take: rental e-scooters and e-bikes are dog-shit terrible. They aren’t comfortable, don’t handle well, where I live they have solid tires which suck for traction and control, they weigh much more than they should, they are often not sized appropriately for each rider, and their power ramp is exceedingly poor compared to what the rider expects.
In other words, they are designed a certain way, and that design makes them much worse to ride.
Unfortunately, the data from rentals typically sets the stage for policy. “Oh, (rental) e-bikes are dangerous? Ban all e-bikes!”
don’t handle well The pedal assist on the lime bikes in London are notorious for kicking in at inappropriate times and causing riders to lose control.
Doctors in A&E use the term ‘Lime bike leg’ for the crush injuries they see because the bikes weigh nearly 30kg and are akin to motorbike crash injuries.
This is compounded by the level of riding and handling skills of those who use those bikes being almost non-existent. My own experience of those riders is that they never shoulder check before moving into a space, just a cursory glance to the floor next to them. They frequently dump them in places where they block pavements and make accessibility for those needing it most, a lot harder.
Seconding the size thing. Scooters are easier to size at least, e-bikes are not. The e-bikes near me, for example, are huge and the first time I tried to get on one I literally just fell sideways before I could get anywhere.
The real story here is that e-scooters are far safer than some try to paint them out to be.
And as always, that cars are still by far the most dangerous
I am quite convinced they are not safe at all, independant from cars being around and even independent from good separated infrastructure. People falling with bikes tend to break wrists. People falling with scooters tend to break faces. (Both should wear helmets in area with very lacking infrastructure.) But the scooter fallers often fly forwards and don’t even manage to soften the blow with their arms, while most bicycle fallers often fall sideways and do something with their arms that’s softening the blow to the head. It mainly has to do with the size of the wheels, bigger wheels offer more stability and make you less likely to “fly”.
The e-scooter rentals weren’t banned in my town for being dangerous, they were banned because peole would just dump them in the middle of the side walk or in people’s yards. I lived on a busy corner and who often have 3+ scooters on the corner blocking the side walk. Now people
they were banned because peole would just dump them in the middle of the side walk or in people’s yards.
Our rentals “fixed” that issue by continuing to run the clock, so the customer would be charged more and more until they actually parked them in a designated area.
It’s a simple fix. Many pilot e-scooter programs didn’t account for this problem in the first year, but I would imagine most implemented this if the program was allowed the next year.
The solution we used in Stockholm for this problem was to make the e-scooter companies liable for incorrectly parked E-scooters - they now have to be parked in specific zones, and the rental companies get a fine if caught in violation of applicable rules.
As long as that highspeed traffic is segregated, e-scooters are fine. It is when they are mixed with slower moving bicycle traffic in bicycle specific lanes that it becomes a big problem. E-scooters masquerading as e-bikes (read: fat tire bikes like phatfour, etc), and e-bikes with the speed governor removed definitely do not belong in bicycle specific lanes.
Since this study was made by Chalmers, it’s likely referring to E-scooters under Swedish rules, where they will top out at 20 km/h. This is slow enough to be in bike lanes without any problems. It’s even significantly slower than many bicyclists riding in the bike lanes.
It’s an interesting result but needs to be studied much more. The amount of ebike crashes is tiny, despite the researchers claiming it’s statistically significant. My biggest problem is that it doesn’t make any sense.
“The researchers analysed 686 crashes involving e-scooterists and 35 involving e-cyclists.”
To ascertain the statistical significance of the findings, we calculated the 95% confidence intervals and p-values (Lash et al., 2021). The statistical significance level was set to α = 0.05.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022437525000878?via=ihub
Yea how does that make any sense? How are 20x more crashes, the safer option? Severity of crash? How do they compare that?
I assume it’s because there are that many more scooters than bisycles on the road, but how can you even begin to argue 35 bicycle crashes across multiple cities across multiple years had any statistical significance?
Yea how does that make any sense? How are 20x more crashes, the safer option? Severity of crash? How do they compare that?
From the article:
“The high number of crashes involving e-scooters reflects that they were used much more frequently than e-bicycles”
They really shouldn’t frame it as “number of crashes” and put it into crashes per 1000 ridden km, or something like that. At least for the layperson.
Edit. I assume it’s because there are that many more scooters than bisycles on the road, but how can you even begin to argue 35 bicycle crashes across multiple cities across multiple years had any statistical significance?
Exactly that. 35 is nothing, especially when they don’t result in fatalities.
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